Stifling democracy

Councillor Cowan last week added his voice to the excellent work done by Tony Johnson highlighting how our local Tories stifle democracy.

Does this surprise anyone given how they behave nationally? We’ve now seen deeper into the sordid reality of the Brexit vote: a Tory government that holds the people of this country in such contempt it didn’t investigate, much less prevent, foreign interference – at a time when Russia was actively interfering in US politics and supported Brexit to weaken both the EU and UK.

While many Brexit supporters may not have been swayed by facts, the narrow margin of the Leave win suggests even a small influence could have pushed the vote over the necessary margin.

And what will the Tory Brexit deliver? Rather than British businesses and jobs being supported by goods entering and leaving the country quickly and efficiently as they did when we were part of the world’s largest single market, the Tories are spending hundreds of millions for them be held up in huge lorry parks, with 50,000 customs officers processing the millions of customs declaration forms that will be needed. All this just to make British businesses less competitive and make things more expensive for everyone else.

Rather than being able to easily live and work anywhere in the EU, a generation of young people already let down by Tory austerity will have to find jobs nearer to home – handy, as that’s about the only place they’ll be able to afford to live.

Perhaps things will get better. ReesMogg suggested it might take 50 years to see the benefits of Brexit – although that was before Covid-19, so it’ll probably take a bit longer now.

The damage, however, will come much sooner as our food standards, environmental protections and other safeguards become early casualties of Brexit.

Dr Peter Hornsby, Wokingham